Welcome to the Kansas
City Agile Group

Agile KC is a tool, technology and
practices agnostic community organization. We meet regularly to discuss
best practices, new learnings and to hear experience reports. Please feel
free to join us at one of our meetings. There are no dues or membership
obligations, we simply ask that you attend and participate in the collaboration.

Next Meeting: Thursday
October 27, 2016 at 6:30 PM

Location:

Centriq Training
8700 State Line Rd.
Leawood KS
66026

Click for a map to the location

Registration:

This will be a sponsored event. In
order to provide our host with a correct count
for dinner, please register for the meeting by
clicking the image to the right

Click to register

Meeting Topic:

The Agile Manager -
Roundtable Discussion and Workshop

Meeting Learning:

Recently the Agile Coaching Institute was in town presenting their Agile Manager
class. This month's meeting will be a roundtable of people that attended
the class and are also Agile Managers in their daily working lives. The
session will cover what the attendees took away from the class and how it has
helped them better manage and lead their teams.

Description:

At times, traditional management philosophies may run counter to Agile
principles and practices (e.g. self-directed teams). The introduction of a
Agile process like Scrum or even a larger change like SAFe often times leads to
deeper challenges with management within an organization. Managers have
been trained and conditioned to allow ways of interacting with their reports and
directing work that don't fit in an agile approach. This leads to
challenges. Managers don't fully understand their role and
responsibilities in an agile setting. There is even an 'anti-management'
undertone sometimes present in the Agile mindset (e.g. pigs and chickens).

As the body of knowledge has matured and grown, managers are understood to be a
crucial part of any Agile | Lean organization. Their role is
significantly different than that of a manager in a waterfall based process.
This session will help articulate what some of those differences might be.
The group will also engage in an exercise to capture what a learning journey for
a manager transitioning from waterfall to agile might entail.

So bring your co-workers and managers and plan on joining us for this
interactive session.

Speakers Bio:

Kay Harper – Kay Harper Consulting
I help leaders of small to mid-sized companies bring efficiency and energy to
their teams and organizations, making them more effective – with the primary
focus on delivering better solutions to their clients. My purpose is to create
positive change. I come at this from a passion of seeing organizations work
well, where leaders and team members have focus, energy and creativity. My
clients will tell you that I do this by bringing alignment to both the people
side of organizations (culture, leadership, teamwork) and business side of
organizations (strategy, process improvement, implementing delivery frameworks).
By creating an environment that allows collaboration around a shared vision,
people start to take ownership of their results and have more fun. And, at the
end of the day, when you have time to focus on what matters, rather than
focusing on putting out fires, you produce incredible results.

Adam Clark – Sprint

Shahzad Zafar – Cerner
Shahzad started at Cerner in 2005 developing C++ and Java Services. In 2009 he
became a Technical Project Manager and has been leading and coaching multiple
teams developing using Lean/Agile methodologies. Currently, he is leading the
cloud development business unit and also leads the Agile Center of Excellence at
Cerner.

Kevin Eilers – Cerner
Kevin is an Iowa State grad who has been working with Cerner for the last 6
years. He has had a few roles with Cerner ranging from client support and
programming to his current job as a Technical Project Manager. He currently
manages several projects under the Communications and Mobility umbrella.

Joy Morrison - NAIC
Joy Morrison has been at the NAIC for 19 years and is currently an Assistant
Director in ITG. In that capacity Ms. Morrison oversees development,
implementation and marketing for several applications including SERFF, OPTins,
AVS+ and VISION. Her teams were among the first at the NAIC to begin the agile
journey with a re-design of a major system in 2006. She has continued to be an
agile proponent at the NAIC as her teams evolve and mature as agile
practitioners. Joy has a B.B.A. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and
is a Certified Agile Practitioner (PMI-ACP).

Join the Agile KC
Google group

You will be notified of upcoming events and
meetings via email.

Depending on your email server settings, you may
need to add Google groups to you spam settings.
Otherwise, you can set up a GMail account and
use that.

Click to join the Agile KC Google Group

Help Grow the Community:

Please send an email to
molsonkc@gmail.org if your organization
would like to host an upcoming Agile KC meeting,
if you have a topic you'd like to hear about or
if you have something you'd like to present.